In recent years, together with the ageing of society, there has been increase in the number of elderly people who live alone and in the number of households made up only of elderly people. Likelihood of occurrence of dementia typically increases with increasing age, and in a survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare it was found that as of 2013 there were 4,200,000 patients with dementia (including mild cases), with further steep increase therein being anticipated.
More than half of dementia patients receive nursing care at home, and there are many patients who, e.g., when the nursing caregiver is not there, etc., begin to wander about and become lost. At present, there being more than 10,000 wandering persons per year who are the subject of a missing person report, organizational activities are underway to achieve coordination with respective municipalities, police, and so forth. Given such circumstances, the Wanderer Monitoring SOS Network as shown in FIG. 9 exists as a system and network for quickly finding wandering elderly persons.
As shown in FIG. 9, the Wanderer Monitoring SOS Network is a system in which an Elderly Assistance Section is established at a municipality (e.g., at the city or town hall thereof), with police department(s) and SOS Network collaborator(s) working in coordination therewith to search for wandering person(s). Where this system has been introduced, a target who wanders or is thought to be at risk of wandering, or the family (nursing caregiver) thereof, can make application to register in advance for wanderer monitoring, so that when a missing person search request is made, found person information can be quickly communicated by way of a single fax transmission or the like.
Because the wandering person search radius increases as the duration of a wandering episode increases, making search by only family and acquaintances difficult, the Wanderer Monitoring SOS Network plays an important role. In addition, it is expected that this Wanderer Monitoring SOS Network will expand to become a nationwide network.